Postdoc's Honors Show that Science and Communication Are Not Like Oil and Water

A blog series about the use of dispersants in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill written by Holly Bik, a postdoctoral researcher in the Hubbard Center for Genome Studies, has been selected for inclusion in an anthology of the year’s top science writing on the Web. Her three-part series for the popular Deep Sea News blog, called “Dispersants! A multi-part series to enlighten your brains” (http://deepseanews.com/?p=9797), reviews the current state of knowledge on the effectiveness and toxicity of chemical dispersants. It is one of 50 pieces out of 900 entries chosen for the OpenLab2010 anthology.

Bik, who has been working in the Gulf of Mexico on a National Science Foundation grant to the HCGS that is investigating the impacts of the oil spill on microscopic marine animals like nematode worms, protists, and fungi (http://www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2010/sep/bp14oil.cfm), was also quoted in the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill’s report to the President. Her work and that of the HCGS is on page 177 of the report, which is here: http://www.oilspillcommission.gov/.

“Being included in the National Oil Spill Commission's report to the president was a surprise but quite an honor for us--it highlights the ongoing role of UNH (and our collaborators at Auburn and the University of Texas at San Antonio) in assessing the impacts of the oil spill on 'overlooked' animals,” she says.